


94 (Si Muero)

by orphan_account



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:05:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Gus dies instead of Max. Apologies to Pablo Neruda.</p>
            </blockquote>





	94 (Si Muero)

After Gustavo died Max went to pieces. For three days, he sat alone in their small shared apartment, pacing. He didn't cry, and that surprised him. Maximino Arciniega had always been an emotional man, but he couldn't bring himself to cry for Gustavo. Instead, he moved restlessly from room to room, running his hands over the bare walls.

The first night was the hardest. One of Don Eladio's men dropped him off just after sunset, walked him up to the door. Max couldn't get the door open; his hands were shaking too hard to get the key into the lock. The capo opened it for him and shoved him inside. He fell on his knees and stayed there for hours. Once or twice, a neighbor knocked on the door, called his name softly, asked where Gustavo was. Max ignored them and their well-intentioned probing. They would find out soon enough.

He started sleeping in the living room, on the pullout couch Gustavo had insisted on purchasing. "For guests," he'd said.

Max knows that it's not irony that has him sleeping on the sofa bed meant for guests, but it feels so ironic that he assumes he'll be given a break for misusing the term. These literary terms, they mean nothing to him. He's a scientist, not a poet, but he knew what it felt like to wake up alone, reaching for someone who wasn't there.

Gustavo had loved poetry. Had loved Pablo Neruda and e. e. cummings and Allen Ginsberg and it was all so predictable and trite that Max used to make fun of him for it.

"' _Si muero sobrevíveme con tanta fuerza pura_ -' how can you read this?" he'd grumble. "What is that even supposed to mean?"

All the same, when Gustavo read to him, his voice raised goose flesh on Max's arms, sent shivers down his spine. There was some sort of power in those words, at least when Gustavo read them to him, his voice slow and measured and steady. He enunciated every word, gave every syllable the same careful consideration. He read reverently, read the way that appraisers handle antiques, the way that sculptors prepare clay, the way that men touch their lovers.

On the third day, Max reopened the restaurant. For three days, it had sat empty, dust collecting in the window sills, flies gathering by the garbage. He needed to do _something_ with himself, or he knew he'd lose his mind. He throws himself into work, into sixteen hour shifts, so when he comes home at night, he can collapse onto the unmade sofa bed without thinking or feeling.

He never went back to the lab, because he was certain that if he did, he'd break down.

There was no funeral, because there was no body. Officially, Gustavo Fring never died. Officially, he was only missing. They lived in a bad neighborhood in a dangerous town in a state run by the Cartel, and with so many real crimes crossing their desks, _la policía_ didn't have time to investigate one missing-persons case. Gustavo had no connections, no wealthy relatives, no friends in high places. Officially, Gustavo Fring simply disappeared. Maybe he'd found a job up north, crossed the border illegally. Maybe he'd gone on a walk, had some sort of accident just outside of town, just outside of any official jurisdiction.

Maybe he'd been murdered by the Cartel.

In the end, it didn't matter. The restaurant was a success. Max stayed in the kitchen and hired managers to run the business. They talked about multiple locations, about expansion into the American Southwest. _Los Pollos Hermanos_ had a very real chance at becoming a viable, moneymaking enterprise. There was nothing left for Max in Mexico, so he said 'okay,' and applied for a visa.

He packed up their things, what little they had, and left the apartment behind. He traded the old for the new, bought a little house in Albuquerque. He opened up a few franchises, and then sold the brand to a German company: Madrigal Electromotive.

His newfound wealth was a source of eternal wonder to Max. He sold the little house, bought a larger one in a nicer neighborhood.He established a scholarship in Gustavo's name at the University of New Mexico. He did't know what he's doing, not really, but he muddled through. His English improved, and soon he spoke so fluently that his accent all but vanished.

He kept a few things of Gustavo's in a jewelry box on his dresser: photographs, recipes written on index cards, rosary beads (his mother's, he'd said). It was too much, it wasn't enough. One day, he put the jewelry box on a shelf in the closet, and he didn't take it down again. Maybe it was better to move on.

But then again, maybe not. Every few months, he'd wake up suddenly, reaching for someone who wasn't there. On those nights, he moved restlessly from room to room, caught up in the grip of something that waxed and waned and lessened with each passing year. He was slowly forgetting, slowly and gracelessly transitioning to that fifth, final stage of grief: acceptance.

One night he realized that he could no longer recall the exact tenor of Gustavo's voice. That night, he stayed up late and read and reread his favorite poems, tried to remember the way that Gustavo's voice had shaped the words, but he came up short. That was when he broke down, that was when the tears finally came. He wept bitterly, and in broken Spanish, he called out into the empty house: "Por qué no podía haber muerto en su lugar?"

And that, _that_ was irony, the final indignity. Max wept.

**Author's Note:**

> Absence is such a transparent house  
> that even being dead I will see you there,  
> and if you suffer, Love, I’ll die a second time.
> 
> [Sonnet XCIV (If I Die)](http://exceptindreams.livejournal.com/184361.html), Pablo Neruda


End file.
